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Talk:Rage-Johnston Skyshield/@comment-27277280-20170526030328/@comment-3013425-20170703164620
@Ironclaws Stalin and Breznev and such had what Putin does not. They had a very strong area under their control, which could easily not only ignore the rest of the world, but also provide aid to its allies. Today, Russia has no hope of completely cutting itself off from the world. *Putin has nationalized the russian media and outlawed non-state owned media (technically a few companies remain, but they don't count because of strong censorship). *He has also made it impossible for anyone to democratically run against him, because: **It's obviously impossible have an election campaign if the entire media obeys Putin. **All opposition leaders always conveniently get arrested for various reportedly made-up reasons just before the election. ***Made up reasons usually include things like "attempting to organize mass meetings that have not been approved by the state/Putin". ***It's illegal in Russia to run for any political job, while in prison. (I guess this is a good thing, but why would a democracy need to be afraid?) ***I don't know if they passed this law yet, but I've heard that if you've been arrested before, then you're not allowed to run for any office again in the future. **Any uprising is also impossible, because (as I've heard) he has founded some national guard-like paramilitary militia that obeys directly the national central command. I don't remember the name of that militia unfortunately, but it seemed strange to me, because in my understanding the russian police and military should have no trouble suppressing the opposition. Maybe they are suppose to help prevent any rebels from even forming? *He has countered the western sanctions (most of which are pretty pitiful) with a ban on the import of food from the EU. The purpose of this is to not only counter the sanctions from the west, but to also force Russia to build up stronger domestic agriculture. **This should work in the long term, but as far as I've heard, food pries in Russia have doubled and the choices of products decreased noticeably. How far the critical point? *Russias economy very nearly collapsed a few times during the recent years as a result of the sanctions. Putin has had to make budget cuts that are very noticeable to the people. Basically Russia is economically in trouble right now. Russia is handling it, but a full invasion of another nation would cause stronger sanctions that they might not be able to handle. *Putin has made a lot of laws to make sure all government offices/officials are cut off from foreign influence and are immune to sanctions: **Not legal to own foreign cars. **Not legal to have foreign bank accounts. **Not legal to use foreign computer operating systems. *Russias internet is nearly cut off. **Social media / e-mails can not be used by opposition, because all sites that operate in Russia must keep all data in servers that are in Russia, where the state can scan everything. **As with the rest of media, news from the west can not be published, unless accompanied by something like 80% local state news and must be worded as opinions. *Russia has only once (or twice) ever had a democratic election (early to mid 90s). **On all more recent elections that have been many proven incidents of systematic large scale fake votes being added into voting boxes and other similar fakes. Don't take my word for it, search for it yourself. The most blatant example that I can remember of was when they put web-cams in front of all ballot boxes to prove that the election is honest, but even then at several voting offices, some guys with large bags just walked over to the boxes and dumped more fake votes in. Obviously there was protests about it, but it made no difference anywhere. Those tapes were shown on even the TV news of several other nations. (But whatever that's not the point here.) *I don't know if this is an actual threat that could be taken seriously, but it was reported on the news a couple of years ago that one strong sanction that the west could to to instantly bankrupt Russia would be to cut Russia off from the banking SWIFT system, meaning that ATMs and bank money transactions would become impossible. Apparently at least some russian officials took it seriously, because I later heard that the russian government ordered (or strongly encouraged) local banks to develop a domestic system that would replace all bank cards and such to safely leave SWIFT, should there be a need to. *I can remember Putin having announced his complete military overhaul project over 10 years ago. He wanted to replace literally all military equipment with completely modern stuff by 2020. The sanctions have completely stopped this by now. Russia has developed a lot of new weapon systems that you have added to your Just Cause X: Global Exchange, but most of those are only available in small numbers. Russia is still mainly relying on T-72s (from the 1970s!). Well OK, the west hasn't developed new tanks either and both sides have modernized their tanks, but I'm saying that the total overhaul of the armed forces is under 50% complete and is very unlikely to pass 70% by 2020. Simply because of the economy being in trouble as mentioned above. *He has also seen to it that it's illegal in Russia to claim that Russia did anything wrong during WW2. According to what Russia now teaches at schools, the Baltic states remained under german occupation after WW1 and were fascist states before WW2. This type of teachings are necessary if he want future russians to feel that they have been wronged somehow and that they have a right to conquer a half of Europe. *The "frozen conflicts" are not a coincident. They help to both isolate Russia and to make russians think that Russia is surrounded by a chaotic enemy and that there's a need to establish peace through military action right over the border. The point is that decades ago it was possible for a dictatorship nation to use tanks to crush any rebellion and invade just about anything with out the fear of sanctions, but now-days it's a lot harder. Putin has already completely secured his power, but he still has to do a lot of time-consuming hard work. As far as I can estimate, it will take at least until 2030 for him to: *Finish his military overhaul. *Beef up the economy. *Wait for "patriotically educated" youth to reach military age. *Cut the society off from the outside world. Media as explained above is already completely cut, but the internet is not as easy. Sure, he could just order it to be cut, but the majority of the people have to be made to agree with that first. This takes time until the older people have gotten used to domestic propaganda having smothered news from the west. So yeah, it's not that Putin is afraid. Unlike you, he does not want an immediate large scale war that would surely bankrupt Russia and possibly end with a revolution against him. He wants to make sure that when the time is right, there will be no way to fail. @Anonymous230385 The EU is actually much more loose than you think. It's not a United States of Europe. Every nation still competes with every other in a lot of ways. Like why do most EU nations even have a local military anymore instead of only having the most mobile units to only defend the EU as whole? You see, every other EU member still thinks there could be a war even in west Europe. Until the EU properly co-operates and acts as a single power with no internal economical borders, it can not be a single superpower. The EU has extreme difficulty agreeing on just about anything political.